Learning To Live – Chi

This is a time of great reflection. We are being given time to reflect on our lives, not just the personal but also the impersonal. Our stay-at-home orders are clear; this is a time to go deeper in knowing ourselves, how and what we think, feel and do. We have never been faced with this new way of looking at ourselves as a nation and a world. What is important, from where did these ideas, feelings and actions come? Do these ideas unite or separate us?

A story comes from long ago about a man on the road meeting “the Plague.” He asked the Plague where he was going, and the Plague said the name of the city from which the man had just come. The man asked how many people would die from the plague, and he was told 250. Months later the man was returning to his city to be of help as 500 people had died. Again, he met the Plague, this time coming from his city. The man asked the Plague what had happened that he took more than the 250 that he had planned. The Plague answered that he was true to his word, only 250 had died from the plague. But he had two companions – Fear and Doubt – that he met on his way into the city.

As we practice T’ai Chi Chih, we often find that because of the peace and calm we experience that we become clear on the mental, emotional and physical levels. We are offered ways to face fear and doubt, and to face the problem itself.

In Justin’s essay, “A Great Bonus” from Spiritual Odyssey, he points out that we often try to think our way through things. This takes a great deal of time and effort. He then offers a better way: “TCC works … not from Mind but from the Chi, which affects the Mind…. But TCC also affects the health, through circulation and balancing of the Chi—this is the great bonus.” This is particularly important as we do Six Healing Sounds.

In the photo text T’ai Chi Chih, Joy Thru Movement, Justin writes of healing sounds made by monks living in the wilderness in ancient times. “According to legend, they evolved a method of repeating certain sounds, synchronized with a motion resembling TCC, in order to ward off illness or cure any indisposition … while slowly uttering the correct sound in a long drawn-out whisper.” He often spoke of how the sounds were to be made using the strength of the tan t’ien and that we would know if we were making the sounds correctly if we practiced by putting our hand on the tan t’ien and feeling the hand pull in toward the abdomen. The sound was not a soft whisper, but a strong one.

As we are strong in the Chi, we heal and learn to live, love and share the Chi.